Having been neither a homosexual nor a member of a high school sports team, I’m not particularly used to looking at naked men. Of course this changed when I went to Japan. One of the most treasured of all Japan’s cultural artefacts is a place where men stand around naked as the day they were born, showering and pouring water over themselves like they’re in a shampoo advert. The Onsen or hot spring is almost ubiquitous in Japan; it’s as common in downtown Tokyo as it is up some god-forsaken mountainside somewhere. Now, before I came to Japan I bought a Lonely Planet guide to Japan, and whilst it had little to say about Nagoya, by local city and the fourth largest in Japan, it did devote thousands upon thousands of column inches to detailing every single onsen no matter how insignificant. I can only assume that this was because being in a big bath is something that forms that backbone of most people’s holidays. However, as much detail as the authors went into about their personal experiences in these various hot springs, they never once mentioned that everyone is naked.
What is your impression of a typical Japanese man? Maybe it’s a samurai type filled with testosterone, or a hard-drinking salary-man (business man) who can’t really handle his booze, or even a trendy, metro-sexual fashionista? Whatever the typical archetype of a Japanese man may be there seems to be one assumption about the Japanese man that seems to be almost universal; that he has a tiny penis. Assumptions about the size of Japanese men seem to condition the foreign mindset; male foreigners will pat each other on the back and feel smugly superior whenever the topic of dong size comes up. So naturally, when the opportunity arose for me to investigate whether there was any truth behind the claims of an unequal distribution of wang, I couldn’t help myself. It was there in the onsen that I started my mission; on a quest to find out whether the Japanese really do have wee willy winkies.
Now, the Japanese do provide modesty towels which, unsurprisingly, are there to provide a modicum of modesty. Being only hand-towels they can only cover the front, not the back, so whilst you can provide decent cover when sitting down by placing it over your lap, you are generally reduced to carrying it loosely in front of you should you decide to walk around. However, all this is hypothetical because no-one ever uses the bloody things. In fact the Japanese seem to make a mockery of the whole situation by placing them on their heads whilst in the bath, for what reason I’m sure I’ll never know, but it allowed me to carry out my research effectively.
In the end, my findings were inconclusive, there were small ones, (including one really, really, embarrassingly small one) and some big ones, but I had to discount the survey because the sample size was too, err..., slim. Besides penis length is supposed to be measured from one’s upstanding citizen, so the experiment was entirely unscientific. That said, the onsen was pretty relaxing, but after half an hour your fingers grow all wrinkly and by then you’ve seen enough wrinkly body parts to last a lifetime. Maybe the whole experience would be different if everyone wore swimming trunks, but if that was the case you would have any memories to wash away with alcohol afterwards, and that wouldn’t be nearly as fun.
